


boxing with glass

by xXstaystillXx



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Basement Era, Emetophilia, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Sibling Incest, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-08 05:33:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21470857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXstaystillXx/pseuds/xXstaystillXx
Summary: “What are youdoing?” Gerard asks, and Mikey won’t even look at him, just keeps his head loose on the ball-joint of his neck, staring at the mud worked up between his knees. Backsplash from the rain pelting his back mists over Gerard's face and it’s so cold it stings.
Relationships: Gerard Way/Mikey Way
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	boxing with glass

Mikey brushed Gerard off and went to the show even though the forecast was all red letters, 80% chance of rain, 50% chance of thunderstorms — which, according to Mikey, just means there's a 20-30% shot for a cloudless, star-flooded night, and Gerard didn't have a chance to tell him how wrong his math was before he whipped out the door and into the Big Black Truck with mud-caked wheels waiting for him outside, a long-haired stranger hanging out and hooting and banging on the metal door as Mikey jogged up, bag smacking against his lower back with every pounding, excited-kid step. 

Yet, still, despite Mikey's optimism, the weather tipped to the majority vote. Rain hit the windows in glassy flecks, then splatters, then buckets, like the world was overflowing, the sky was having a fit; Gerard was driven to the basement with his rheumy old 1980something CD player and a filched beer to get away from the noise. Noah's arc could go floating overhead and he'd still be sitting here stock still because Newark, New Jersey is as untouchable and as redundant as time. He's immortal, he's been here forever, and nothing's ever going to change. Not for him. 

The lights flicker a few times, but he's got a battery-powered light to clip onto his pages so he goes ahead and fries his eyes out squinting at his sketchbook in the gloom. Every time it snaps to darkness and then back again his CD starts from the beginning, which would bother him if it was a mixtape but it's _Siamese Dream_; he's heard it so many times and has it playing so low it's just a comforting, rolling buzz in the background, every song indistinguishable from the last. He doesn't know how long he's down there, just counts the percussive rumble of thunder and keeps working until his hand cramps and he finally raises his head to see what little light had been leaking in is gone, went from dull, pouring grey to nothing. 

Something taps against the basement window. Gerard dismisses it as a stick or a rock kicked up by a passing car until it taps again, louder, more urgent, and he looks up right before Mikey's heavy knock-off boot slams into the glass once, twice, _bam, bam_. The flimsy plastic lock pops out of the sill like a button from a fat man's shirt and flies across the room; the window smacks open with violence and Mikey's soaked black-jean leg follows his boot as it crashes into the dusty boxes of records their parents keep in the corner.

Gerard goes “Shit!” and jumps at least three feet into the air and watches, stunned, as Mikey struggles to pull his leg up so he won't scrape all the skin off his back falling through the narrow window. His jeans are missing the cloth over one road-rashed knee. 

“Gerard? He whispers, and he sounds absolutely miserable, like he's been smoking and screaming and the combination of both cracked his voice in two. He gets his leg underneath him — half-folded, ankle bent at an uncomfortable angle — and all Gerard can see from there is his skinny cold-water-pale hand around the corner of the sill, his shoulders, his tank top plastered down yet still somehow too big on him. He's shaking, flecked with mulch and grass clippings. “You— you down there?” 

“Shit,” he says again and thrashes out of bed, comforter and sheets catching him up and sending him hands-and-knees to the floor before he can kick everything away. “Hold on, Mikey, Jesus— I'll get you in, hold on,” and he's not there yet before Mikey's ducking his head and trying to climb in all wrong anyway. Gerard barely gets there soon enough to catch him and keep him from faceplanting into the records, shove him outside for a second because he knows from experience you can't come through that window headfirst. He's freezing cold and soaked to the bone, smearing Gerard with water, weirdly limp when he takes him by the shoulders. 

“What are you _doing_?” Gerard asks, but Mikey won't even look at him, just keeps his head loose on the ball-joint of his neck, staring at the mud worked up between his knees. Backsplash from the rain pelting his back mists over Gerard's face and it's so cold it stings. 

“M'gonna barf,” he mutters, and his jaw works slightly and his face goes pale and Gerard panics. 

“Fuck.” he pushes Mikey's head back under the frame and pats his knees, trying to get him to unbend and climb in the way a sane person would. “Okay, legs first, c'mon, hurry.” He doesn't move right away and Gerard thinks about how fucking much he doesn't want him vomiting on him from a windowsill; that gets him to yank a little harder and tell him to hurry the hell up. Mikey finally grasps the idea and slithers in like a wet, dirty lizard, Gerard's hands clutching his ribcage so he'll clear the sill. He's dead weight and immediately sends them both crashing down, Gerard's elbow and hip hitting the boxes with all their combined 300something pounds of weight behind it; he hears a crunch and hopes it's a few Bruce Springsteen albums and not bone. 

Aching, he tries to sit up, but Mikey's crushed against him and keeping him down, hands slipping against the shag carpet but getting no purchase. He really is filthy; there's grass confetti-flecked from his knees to his heels to his arms and then some, mud splattered up the back of his shirt like it's the rear window of an off-roader; a bleeding scratch on one bony shoulder, right across the bump where his clavicle ends and he's missing skin on a few knuckles; his hair is matted wet to his head, making his skull look too small. Gerard manages to roll him off and hoist him up. 

“What the hell happened to you?” he asks, Mikey's hair smudging against the side of his face when his head bobs. He starts to answer, just a garbled sentence that sounds a little like _rained out_ and _bar_ but his legs buckle before Gerard can fully decode it, his ankles, then his knees giving as if they'd died independently of the rest of his body. He's upsettingly skinny nowadays, but Gerard's nowhere near strong enough to hold him up on his own. “Fuck, Mikey!” 

They go down fast and hard, carpet burning against Gerard's knees even though his pajama pants. Mikey sprawls across the floor, facedown and motionless for a second until he starts shaking, shivering so, so hard, and then he raises himself up on his elbows and looks blearily around the room only to heave and vomit right between his angled arms. He makes a groan-y, sob-y noise and wobbles but Gerard is recovered enough to pull him sideways before he goes facefirst into it. His upper lip split open a tiny bit when he hit the ground and his nose has a streak of pink carpet burn on the bridge. Gerard feels like he could cry.

“Sorry,” Mikey slurs, and to his horror Gerard sees _he's_ starting to cry, nose wrinkling and his face blotching redder than it already was, eyes pressed shut. Blood from his split lip rolls down his chin in an arc, the cut no bigger than his pinky nail. 

“No, no, Mikes,” he says, panicky, and smooths the wet hair back from his hot face, the temperature contrast setting his skin tingling. Mikey leans into his touch and the tears start rolling. Gerard never wants to see his teeth grit like that again. “Mikey, Mikes, it's okay, you didn't mean to.”

“I'm sorry,” he chokes, not seeming to hear. Gerard feels his own eyes burn and presses his forehead into Mikey's even though he smells like a waterlogged pack of cigarettes left mouldering in a gutter. 

“Come on, let's get you to the bathroom,” he says, trying to sound helpful and older-brother-ish. Mikey clings to his arms when he takes his wrists, pulls him to his feet again, closer to the wall so if he buckles a second time he might be able to lean against it and stay upright. 

—

Mikey crumples over the toilet like a cut swathe of cloth, banging his knees so hard on the tile floor it makes a ringing sound beneath the thud, him and his windchime bones. He throws up again, and again and again, small mouthfuls at a time. When his body stops clenching he rests his face on the seat, spattered here and there with dark blobs of puke, red-eyed from the effort. 

“Better?” Gerard asks, and he just kinda mutters. Snot and a bright, blurry line of blood still trickling from his lip run into his open mouth. 

“Yeah. I know.” He opens the mirror-door of the medicine cabinet to find him some naproxen or something — he thinks he heard how taking it while you're still wasted brings down the hangover — but Mikey starts gagging again and Gerard ends up standing there with his hand slipping, slowly losing its grip on the mirror as he listens to Mikey be sick, choke, spit into the bowl, the liquid snap of it. It's like hearing a car crash, or a couple's spat from one room over; voyeuristic without a voice, schadenfreude without the spite. He curls his foot up against his calf until his toes pop, looking into the rows of pill bottles and toothpaste and blankly reading prescriptions (Wellbutrin Way, Gerard A; Levothyroxine Way, Donna L; Tegretol Way, Michael J) but not seeing anything, rattled or lightheaded or both.

Mikey's stopped for now; the silence is four times as loud and the bathroom feels so static, airless. Gerard finally sees the Advil.

Gerard glances at him, how he's buckled on the floor. This looks like shots on an empty stomach. If he hadn't brought home Taco Bell and given Mikey two different kinds of burritos plus a quesadilla and watched him wolf it all down as if he'd been starving, he would have guessed he'd done just that, shots on an empty stomach. 

Gerard thinks about all the times Mikey left a good finger's width of drink in the can or glass and he'd throw it back, germs be damned, telling him _we came out of the same hole, Mikes, don't be a baby._ He thinks about Mikey balanced cross-legged on the kitchen counter, wiping hot sauce on his shorts, Taco Bell wrappers scattered like shed snakeskin. He thinks about Mikey lining up glasses and tipping dive bar Jaëger into them and taking shots like cough syrup but he just can't see it, all he can see is him cringing at the taste of the Fireball Gerard had been nice enough to share. 

(He thinks about Mikey smeared across the road or choking to death on some stoner's couch or broken off the edge of a cliff or lying with his brains oozing into a gas-station bathroom sink or, or, or, or and on and on.)

Once, tipsier than he'd admit, fumbling the tools, Gerard showed Mikey how to unlock the liquor cabinet; open the door a crack and fit a screwdriver into the latch, pop it off, stupid easy, their parents didn't even pay attention when things went missing. He didn't know it was one of those days where Mikey wasn't eating. He just kept handing him drinks and they both got drunk as lords, rattling around their little empty house, shouting down the ceiling about _school_ and the _system_ and _selling out_ but Mikey was so, so much worse than Gerard. He wobbled over in the middle of the living room and broke a leg off the coffee table and bruised his ribs black-and-blue; they'd been scream-singing along to _Hotel California_, sitting on the kitchen floor with their knees pressed together, and they kept singing until Mikey started crying and apologizing for things he hadn't done, then locked himself in the bathroom and barfed for ten minutes. But he wasn't like this. He'd _never_ been this bad, and this sort of mess is what they do.

(Shots on an empty stomach.)

Gerard shakes three Advil out into his palm and pours a glass of water and swallows his heart down his throat.

“Hey, sit up,” he says, and then “Christ, man, work with me here,” when Mikey's shoulders flex a little but he doesn't move, like he tried to but thought better of it. Gerard picks him up by the armpits and sets him against the wall, unnerved by how little he resists.

“Think you can take these?” He holds out the Advil and Mikey looks down cross-eyed, shrugs, and picks one out of his palm only to drop it onto his crotch. For the first time, Gerard notices how dilated up pupils are, the fever-spots on his cheeks, how slow and shallow he's breathing.

“Goddammit,” Mikey mumbles, fumbling through the creases of his jeans for the tiny little pill until Gerard pushes away his hands and pinches it up himself. He lets his eyes close and clunks his head against the wall, rattling their Mom's goofy ceramic fish wall hangings, his expression drifting between vaguely frustrated and the verge of tears like a seasick stumble.

“It's fine, open your mouth, I'll just stick it in there,” Gerard says, quickly, as he flicks that specific Advil underneath the vanity; Mikey's still streaked with mud, vomit, and blood, and the pill got a good transfer of all that after he touched it.

Mikey gives him the most recognizable look of the night, his are-you-serious squint that lines up the corners of his eyes. Gerard ignores it and places his thumb against his chin, presses a little and, mindless, puppet-y, he lets him place the Advil one by one on his tongue like he's a Pez dispenser. He's still placid when Gerard brings the glass to his lips, drinks in shallow, careful pulls, hands in his lap, leg jittering but otherwise perfectly still.

Gerard's still scared he's gonna choke on the pills in the back of his mind, the same place that_ shots on an empty stomach_ is flickering like an old neon sign. He's aware he kept his hand on Mikey's face— barely cupped against his acne-studded jaw, more of a hover than a touch, keeping his chin from drifting into his chest— but he doesn't think anything of it until water starts pouring down Mikey's front because he stopped drinking and Gerard just held him in place and waterboarded him like an idiot, thousand-yard staring at a spot on his forehead. He yanks the glass away a little too hard. Mikey just leans back, and he should be panting because people do that after they hold their breath to chug, but if anything his breathing is shallower than before.

“Trying'a drown me,” he says, the words blurred through the water flicking from his lips, his chin and neck slick-looking. Gerard kind of smiles weakly. Mikey slits his eyes and gives him an outsized parody grin-grimace, underbit, his teeth an off-yellow block between his gums.

“So,” Gerard starts, feeling like a camp counselor or something, “you gonna tell me what the hell you did?” 

“Set rained out halfway,” Mikey mutters. 

Gerard looks at his knuckles, the scrape on his knee, his cut collarbone. “Did someone hurt you?” 

A rolling, loose-shouldered shrug. “Bar fight.”

“A _bar_ let you in, huh." 

He just shrugs again, starts picking at the loose threads from a rip in his jeans. “Didn't card me.” 

Gerard wants to ask him more but he can tell he won't get anything out of him except monosyllables; he knows that twist to Mikey's mouth from years of sitting across from him at the dinner table while their parents quizzed about grades, about girls, about so-and-so's mom saying she saw him do such-and-such. 

“Stay close to the toilet, okay, man?” Gerard says and stands up but before his knees are done popping Mikey has the leg of his sweatpants fisted, arm shaking. Everything's drained from his face, the blotchy flush, the petulance, leaving him nothing but fear, a grey shadow of what he looked like as a little kid stumbling through a haunted house. 

“Don't leave.” Mikey's hand curls tighter. “Please.” 

At that, Gerard's chest hitches, and he feels such thick pity for him he's afraid it's going to clog up an artery and he'll collapse to the floor next to him, hands clamped over his heart. He takes a deep breath, exhales slowly through his nose. He can park Mikey on his bed for a second while he grabs some PJ's, it'll be fine, all they have to do is get there without faceplanting again. It'll work out. 

He gets the red bucket they keep cleaning supplies in out from under the sink and dumps a tangled mess of Windex bottles and brushes onto the floor, winching at the skittering clatter of plastic. Mikey kicks away a toilet brush with his heel. 

“Alright. I'm gonna help you up, okay?” Mikey nods but that uncertain, scared look doesn't leave, just cements, like he's going to spend the rest of his life clinging to Gerard's arm because he made the stupid mistake of letting his brother saunter off into the world alone and this is his punishment, which, stupid; by tomorrow Mikey will his normal sober self. Regretful, achy, and paying the piper in the way of a wicked hangover if Gerard's experience with mornings-after is anything to go by, but normal. Less of a wavering half-person crumpled on the bathroom tile and more of the Mikey Way that trotted out the front door and into a Big Black Truck not twelve hours ago. 

(Some stupid part of Gerard's brain— probably the neon _shots on an empty stomach_ district— won't let up on the idea of Mikey being this forever, as if tonight's bullshit was brain damage instead of a few too many. It would break his heart to see him reduced to this but, quietly, he wouldn't mind. Schadenfreude again, but in a loving way, and he really should stop using that word if he doesn't mean it but he can't pin himself down.)

Gerard picks him up and manages not to let the floor slip out from under his sockfeet, even when Mikey's huge boots knock into his ankle. “One step at a time,” he says, and Mikey looks green from the altitude change but he nods anyway. 

—

Mikey gets dumped on the futon. Gerard would prefer to get him in a proper bed, but his legs started shaking under his weight about five steps across the basement floor and he didn't trust himself much further than that. Besides, his bedroom door is in direct eyeshot of the futon; Mikey can watch him duck in there for five seconds to get clothes, make sure himself Gerard isn't abandoning him forever, or whatever. Just in case, he keeps his foot stuck out in the hall where Mikey can see. 

Gerard comes back with a handful of wadded-up yet clean pajamas and towels from the hall closet. Mikey doesn't seem to hear him until he's half a foot away, head knocked back, and even then he jumps he tosses the clothes on the futon. Seeing that, how oblivious he is, Gerard wonders again what went wrong. He doesn't even know what goddamn show Mikey was at— he feels so, so stupid for not paying attention when he namedropped the band like he was proud of it— and that's just the start. Who was he with that let him get so drunk he can't keep his head upright for the thirty seconds he was left alone? 

Gerard picks up Mikey's hand, gingerly, his fingertips resting on his palm and his wrist in a gentle grip in case he's got a sunken knuckle or broken bones, so he doesn't jostle anything that needs to stay put. His palm is all dry and hot like he has a fever. 

“Shit, Mikes, were you wailing on someone's face or someone's fuckin' drywall?” There isn't enough skin on his bones; his ring and pinkie are mostly untouched, just puffy and blood-blistered, but his index and pointer knuckles are missing hunks. One has a flap of skin the size of a fingernail hanging on by a thread. 

Gerard curls Mikey's fingers into a ball. “Fist.” He makes a loose, careful one, but a fist is a fist. “Open.” No popping, no shifting bones, just a wet shimmer of exposed flesh as his hand eases flat. “Flip me off.” He makes a valiant effort, but his bird is more twitching his middle finger out and lightly curling the others inward, so slow it's like they're taking turns. He can't fault him for his motor controls right now.

“Wish I could see the other guy,” he says, joke falling flat and tinny.

He does a cursory cleaning of Mikey's handful of wounds, working with just a wet washcloth to pick the grit out and wipe off the crusted blood because Gerard can't find the disinfectant on a good day; for all he knows, their parents shoved it in the back of the liquor cabinet because it says “alcohol ” on the label and they think he's that stupid. Mikey winces and woozily calls him a motherfucker a few times and, once, tries to pull away when Gerard jabs his knee too hard, but other than that he's pretty tolerant. 

“Hope you don't get MRSA,” Gerard says, and moves up to mop up the liner out from under his eyes but it won't come up and he realizes he's not wearing makeup, his dark circles are just that bad. Pity, pity, pity. 

Mikey's shirt's on backward, twisted around him and tacky-wet, but it comes off easy; he mutters and thrashes a bit like a toddler getting stripped for the bath, but his arms raise with a little direction. Then boots, those offbrand docs that always seemed too big for his newly-skinny chicken legs, the laces so tight they cut into Gerard's fingers. He could have sworn Mikey was wearing a belt when he left but it's MIA, probably lying wherever he dropped his glasses — and his bag, which totally sucks. His wallet was in there.

He pulls off Mikey's jeans and they actually _squelch_ down his thighs, water running from the folds and soaking into the futon. At least, he thought it was water until the smell hit him; ammonia, sharp enough to make his nose wrinkle. He'd pissed himself, either at the show or in the mystery gap afterward or, maybe, just sitting on the bathroom floor and Gerard didn't notice because he's a horrible brother. 

“Mikey, you're a fucking wreck, you know that?” Gerard really doesn't want to take off his underwear but he knows he'll get a nasty rash if he sits in that so, reluctantly, he coaxes Mikey into lifting his hips and peels off his worn red-green-black plaid boxers, thinking how their dad bought them both a pack of that underwear two Christmases ago. He's so close to passed out he doesn't even try to cover himself, just lets his dick flop out. Gerard tries not to look and balls up his rank clothes an arms-length away.

Two steps from the stairwell he remembers Mikey's being stray-puppy clingy and turns back before he can start whining, only to instantly wish he hadn't when he gets his first look at him from a distance, like one of those junk-pile sculptures that only make a picture when you see it from twenty paces away. He looks so wrong; sick and naked and soaked on the couch, soft dick pressed vulnerable and wormlike into his thigh, head lolled back and his chest rising and falling in time with his clogged-nose wheezing. He looks like a 200-year-old portrait of a plague victim, or a photograph you'd find in a shoebox under a pedophile's bed, or a cautionary tale from a D.A.R.E afterschool special they forgot to censor. He looks like he's going to break apart. 

Sometime between Mikey's window stunt and the two of them settling here, the basement snapped free of the house and sunk down further into the earth so they're buried alive together, trapped under layers upon layers of dirt and there's only so much air; Gerard needs to take sipping, quiet inhales so his brother can keep breathing longer than him. He wants to smooth his hair back from his face again and kiss his forehead like Mom used to when he had a cold. He wants to look at his middle school yearbook photos. He wants to bundle him up and hold him like he hasn't since he was ten, even though Mikey's almost taller than him now and his head won't tuck under his chin and get fine blonde 7-year-old hair in Gerard's mouth every time he breathes. He doesn't know what he wants, or who he is or what he's supposed to do, all he knows is that's Mikey Way asleep naked on the futon soaked in piss and rainwater and it makes him hurt like nothing else. 

The impulse hits him fast and by now Gerard's not enough of anything to do much but go with it. He drops Mikey's clothes and crosses the room to get his yet-unopened Rolling Rock from where he left it, entrenched in the flurry of loose papers that'd drifted over his bed and blankets in a dotted-line halo when he flung himself out of bed. It's still cold enough to make his gums sting from the iced carbonation as he swallows, chugging like it's a party trick, knowing that it's a stupid choice and he needs to stay level, but doing it anyway for that lightheaded, almost immediate rush. 

Like it's God's personal fuck-you, he's in the middle of a second pass at draining the can when the power clicks off with less warning than a bullet to the head, and stays off. 

“Mother_fucker_!” Gerard hisses, whisper-shouting so he doesn't wake anyone up, and kicks Mikey's clothes against the wall. They splat but don't stick, just flop down, a roadkill shape in the dark, something else for him to scrub in the morning before his parents come to check on them. For good measure, he hurls the mostly-empty empty beer can too.

Mikey gasps sharp at the clang and says “Gerard?” sounding so, so scared. 

Gerard goes to scrape his hands over his face but remembers what he's been touching and settles for sinking to the floor in a crouch, scrubbing his nose and eyes in the crook of his elbow. “ ‘S okay, man, tree on a power line or whatever.” He gives himself another second of itchy frustration and then stands up, sighing. “I'll find candles.”

He leaves the clothes lying where they fell, next to the slowly-dripping can. 

—

Hunting around takes Gerard longer than he thought. Not just because he's fumbling around in the dark but because Mikey starts calling for him after less than a minute, thin, freaked-out voice too loud for comfort, so he has to head back to the futon and squat down in front of him and push his hair back and tell him _I'm still here, I'm not going anywhere, I just need to get some stuff, Mikes, please,_ and he'll sniffle a little bit and curl his hot fingers around Gerard's wrist but he lets him go for another minute. He makes it work after a billion trips; shitty bath-and-body-works scented jar candles (Midnight Beach Wedding Cake Salted Caramel) and tea lights from under the bathroom sink, lighter from his hoodie pocket, as always.

He holds the “Wedding Cake” candle upside down so the flame can reach the wick; it pops, coughs, and then catches. Warm light bleeds over the room. Mikey looks corpselike, even more like some dramatic romanticism oil painting of an ailing youth, and for a second Gerard's really scared he blacked out for real or died or something because he doesn't even open his eyes until he shakes him. 

“Mmm?” He raises his hand to adjust glasses that aren't there. 

“Uh,” Gerard says, all thoughts of his untimely funeral fading. He doesn't know if it's a weird response to stress or the beer fuzzing him up or what, but at the greasy drag of Mikey's bare skin, his flame-lit bony limbs shifting against cloth, the uncomfortably dark thatch of his pubes, Gerard feels himself starts to chub up and lets go of Mikey's shoulder as fast as he can. He digs his own fingernails into the meat of his arm, head spinning, and at the blip of pain his dick calms down. 

He's got some unfortunate associations; his first and best handjob was after he'd held the girl upright as she hurled into someone's mom's flowers; once, at a school-sanctioned football game, he ended up wedged between a toilet tank and the wall because he was too blasted to know any better and thought Iero needed moral support while he was heaving his guts out or some shit, and _that_ fucking mess had ended with Frank backing him into the corner and watching him jerk off.

Even if it was a thing — which it isn't, it's just a long-running joke, really — it wouldn't have anything to do with Mikey. He's just collateral. He's just naked, and barfy, and there's beer in the back of Gerard's throat so that makes him think about cumming onto that girl's sweater hushed-up behind the bushes and Iero's biker boot crushing him into the cold plastic stall wall. It's called a Pavlovian response, and if there's a name for it it's fine, it's whatever. He's like those dogs when the bell rang. It's not as if putting his brother back together gets him hard. 

His head is starting to hurt. 

Gerard lights the rest of the candles and scatters them around, on the end table, on the TV stand, on the arm of the futon that's farthest away from Mikey so he doesn't knock them off and burn the house down. Toweling him is freaky because Gerard can pick up his limbs and move them this way and that, hating how he just lets it happen, slack all through it, even when he pushes a hand to the soft, pale inside of Mikey's thighs and parts them to he can wipe off his crotch. Gerard didn't need to reach that far up but he was hoping he'd react, laugh and slap his hand away, call him a freak. But he just sits there and stares at the ceiling. 

Gerard dries him. He dresses him. There's a moment right before he pulls on Mikey's PJ pants when it's all he can do to stop himself from crying so he folds up and rests his head against his ankle with the flannel bunched up in his hands, wishing like hell Mikey would kick him away, a weird, twisting half-feeling in the small of his spine, that Pablo-or-whatever reaction half-chub chafing in his sweatpants the whole time. 

“Alright, c'mon.” Gerard feels around for the half-empty water bottle that always seems to be rolling around under the futon, holds it up. “Round two. Promise I won't drown you this time.” 

Mikey seems to drift back to him a little bit, raises his head, lets him fit the mouth of the bottle against his lips and pour some down his throat. Gerard hates to feed him nasty months-old water but he doubts he'd let him go to the bathroom and refill it fresh. 

“Okay, you wanna—” he starts, about to stupidly ask if he wants to risk eating anything, if he could make him a grilled cheese or something; the question isn't even all the way out before Mikey interrupts him with a gross burp-gurgle kind of noise, slides to the floor, and fumbles for the bucket. Gerard passes it to him quick. He hunches over, dry-heaves a few times before he hears liquid hit the plastic. He's gagging up mouthfuls of water, milky with barely-dissolved pills splattering into the bucket as his back shakes violently. 

Gerard scoots over, puts a knee on either side of his shoulders, and he just wants to rub his back to make him feel better but Mikey makes this grateful, miserably, gurgly whimper at his touch, clean PJ shirt already getting damp with sweat. Gerard finds himself getting far too close until — head floating somewhere 10 miles up — he actually slides off the futon and behind him, legs on either side, arms around his waist, forehead pressed into the back of his neck. Not moving, not doing anything, just listening to his bones hitch and his throat work. 

Gerard keeps waiting for the inevitable; he'll hear his mom's footsteps on the stairwell and she'll ask what's going on down there in the dark and she'll see her oldest son with his brother in his lap, face pressed into his sweat-dark spine while he vomits, and she won't be able to see but Gerard knows, he knows she'd be able to tell he's getting hard with nightmare-logic certainty. 

Eventually, Mikey stops. It's so quiet. Just rain on the roof so far above them.

Guilty. guilty, guilty, ignoring his boner the best he can, Gerard presses oh-so-soft on Mikey's collarbone, and instantly he lays down against his chest, squirms, sighs a little like he's finally getting comfortable. His hair brushes Gerard's nose, still wet but drying in ratty clumps, and he shoves his face into it; underneath all the grossness he smells like Mikey always has, bitter grease and hair gel, so human it's soothing. 

Wordlessly, his mouth all cottoned up, Gerard feels with sweaty hands around Mikey's ribcage, hating himself, then his waist; so unfamiliarly small, strange to the touch, like he's still expecting the soft rolls of fat he started to lose last summer instead of straight lines, the only evidence in the loose skin curled up at his stomach. Mikey doesn't react. Gerard wonders if he can tell at all, and then why he wouldn't be able to. 

Mikey shifts slightly and murmurs a half-word when Gerard reaches his neck and he freezes, heart stuttering, breathing stiff and high in his throat like he's handling a small, skittish animal; he settles after a second or two but Gerard still counts to five slow in his head before he pushes his nose back into his hair and starts touching him again, and he keeps his fingers light. The hardest part is not knowing if he's psyching himself up or trying to talk himself out of it. Either way, his head's real loud.

He wants to stop. He wants to die. He wants to stick his fingers down his little brother's overworked raw throat and feel him spasm and throw up around them, watch the sick pour out of him. 

Mikey raises his head from his chest and Gerard physically jolts, hand caught against his cheekbone, dragged along for the ride. “What?” he says, only that, and the first _sorry_ spills out of him and then he can't stop, _sorry sorry sorry I’m sorry sorry sorry_ like marbles spilling from a broken jar, just as shiny and uselessly noisy. He gets up so fast he knees Mikey in the head and takes the five steps to the bathroom and tumbles in, slams the door behind him.

He thinks Mikey says something muffled by the door and the walls between them but he can't really hear it over the blood roaring in his ears as he yanks down his waistband and squeezes his dick so hard it feels like getting kicked in the crotch, and he doesn't let up until he starts crying like he's been needing to all night. Only then does he let himself grind into his fist until he's hard again, sliding down the wall, on the floor. The hot blur of his mouth and his crunched-up face in the mirror, his cheeks sliding wet and pink like something obscene against the cold porcelain sink when he curls over. It takes him humiliatingly little to cum all over his hands and the nice teakwood vanity legs. 

Gerard knocks his forehead against the sink, sobs short through clenched teeth. The dull ache feels right so he does it again, and then again, one more time and then he's bringing his head down so hard it's making black spots glance across his eyes so he stops for the sake of staying conscious, even though he deserves to bash his brains out. He doesn't want to go back out there. He can't look at Mikey. He can't do it, he can't go back out there, he can't bring himself to turn that cold doorknob and look at his poor sick baby brother and know he just came thinking about the way his soft dick looked pressed against his thigh. 

Gerard goes back out there.

Mikey passed out for keeps while he was gone, slumped over with his ear pressed into his arm. He gently picks him up and lays him on his side on the futon so he doesn't choke if he throws up again, pulls an afghan over him. 

He tracks down the plastic lock and presses it into the windowsill so it at least doesn't look broken. He wipes the piss-rainwater splat mark off the wall. He dumps out the bucket, rinses it. He picks up his clothes and quietly, with a candle held out in front of him, goes to the laundry room upstairs and puts them in the wash, and if he was smart he'd stay up there, spend the night on the living room couch, but he's not that smart. 

Gerard goes downstairs and stares at Mikey for thirty seconds and then he can't find anything else to do so he ends up in the bathroom with the door locked; he shoves himself into the corner and cries again, and when he's done crying he jerks off for a second time, huffing his palm because it smells like Mikey's hair and puke and dirty clothes and he'll take that to his grave.

**Author's Note:**

> totally not implying anything but lets just say gw is so fucking lucky mikey instantly puked up that advil bc otherwise hed be in the hospital


End file.
